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4434OAPEN Library - Measuring and Promoting Wellbeinghttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1363026
״Australia continues to be at the forefront of international work on measuring and promoting wellbeing, Ian Castles being a significant contributor over the last forty years as an official and academic. This book combines a selection of Castles&rsquo; important work with contemporary research from a range of contributors. The material is in four parts: 1. The role of economics in defining and promoting wellbeing 2. Measuring real income and wellbeing 3. Measuring inequality 4. Climate change and the limits to growth. The issues canvassed are both long-standing and current. Does economic growth contribute to wellbeing? How different is income to wellbeing? How do we measure societal wellbeing and take its distribution into account? The book will be of value to all those looking to informed debate on global challenges such as reducing poverty, sustaining the environment and advancing the quality of life, including politicians, commentators, officials, and academics.״Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:56:09 -0800The China Boom and its Discontentshttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1363017
Chinese economic growth is less problematic now than at any time since the beginnings of reform more than a quarter of a century ago. Economic growth last year and this is proceeding at an annual rate around nine and a half percent, which is the average rate of the reform period. The deflation of the early twenty-first century has ended, without being replaced by worrying degrees of inflationary pressure. Last year&rsquo;s concerns about excessive investment in the stateowned heavy industry have been eased by restrictions on bank credit and a modest increase in interest rates. Current external payments have moved into surplus to an extent that is generating international anxieties, and which requires correction, but on a scale that can be corrected without dislocation. Direct foreign investment is high and increasing, contributing much to productivity growth. The private sector continues to grow rapidly, as a share of total activity as well as absolutely, with artificial restrictions on its expansion being removed progressively. The state-owned enterprises are shrinking steadily as a share of the economy, their number is falling absolutely with restructuring including sale into the private sector, and the financial performance of those which remain is improving with reform.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:50:11 -0800The China Boom and its Discontentshttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1363010
Chinese economic growth is less problematic now than at any time since the beginnings of reform more than a quarter of a century ago. Economic growth last year and this is proceeding at an annual rate around nine and a half percent, which is the average rate of the reform period. The deflation of the early twenty-first century has ended, without being replaced by worrying degrees of inflationary pressure. Last year&rsquo;s concerns about excessive investment in the stateowned heavy industry have been eased by restrictions on bank credit and a modest increase in interest rates. Current external payments have moved into surplus to an extent that is generating international anxieties, and which requires correction, but on a scale that can be corrected without dislocation. Direct foreign investment is high and increasing, contributing much to productivity growth. The private sector continues to grow rapidly, as a share of total activity as well as absolutely, with artificial restrictions on its expansion being removed progressively. The state-owned enterprises are shrinking steadily as a share of the economy, their number is falling absolutely with restructuring including sale into the private sector, and the financial performance of those which remain is improving with reform.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:49:33 -0800China - Linking Markets for Growthhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1363003
China&rsquo;s prosperity is at the core of the emerging Platinum Age of global economic growth. Rapid economic growth has been underpinned by expansion in its domestic markets, and the integration of domestic and international markets in goods, services, capital, labor and foreign exchange. Global commodity prices have reached historic highs, while China&rsquo;s capital outflows have helped to hold down interest rates worldwide. Linking markets, both domestic and international, has been key to China&rsquo;s success. In sustaining its strong economic growth, China has become one of the world&rsquo;s most voracious consumers of energy. The challenge now facing the government and people of China is in achieving cooperation with the international community to avert the costs&ndash;both economic and environmental&ndash;of accelerating energy consumption. China&ndash;Linking Markets for Growth gathers together leading scholars on China&rsquo;s economic success and its effect on the world economy into the next few decades.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:41:28 -0800Framing the Global Economic downturn : Crisis rhetoric and the politics of reces...https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362999
The global economic downturn that followed the collapse of major US financial institutions is no doubt the most significant crisis of our times. Its effects on corporate and governmental balance sheets have been devastating, as have been its impacts on the employment and well being of tens of millions of citizens. It continues to pose major challenges to national policymakers and institutions around the world. Managing public uncertainty and anxiety is vital in coping with financial crises. This requires not just prompt action but, most of all, persuasive communication by government leaders. At the same time, the very occurrence of such crises raises acute questions about the effectiveness and robustness of current government policies and institutions. With the stakes being so high, defining and interpreting what is going on, how and why it happened, and what ought to be done now become key questions in the political and policy struggles that crises invariably unleash. In this volume, we study how heads of government, finance ministers and national bank governors in eight countries as well as the EU engage in such &lsquo;framing contests&rsquo;, and how their attempts to interpret the cascading events of the economic downturn were publicly received. Using systematic content analysis of speeches and media coverage, this volume offers a unique comparative assessment of public leadership in times of crisis.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:35:41 -0800Competition Law and Economic Regulation : Addressing Market Power in Southern Af...https://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362994
Shaping markets through competition and economic regulation is at the heart of addressing the development challenges facing countries in southern Africa. The contributors to 'Competition Law And Economic Regulation: Addressing Market Power In Southern Africa' critically assess the efficacy of the competition and economic regulation frameworks, including the impact of a number of the regional competition authorities in a range of sectors throughout southern Africa. Featuring academics as well as practitioners in the field, the book addresses issues common to southern African countries, where markets are small and concentrated, with particularly high barriers to entry, and where the resources to enforce legislation against anti-competitive conduct are limited. What is needed, the contributors argue, is an understanding of competition and regional integration as part of an inclusive growth agenda for Africa. By examining competition and regulation in a single framework, and viewing this within the southern African experience, this volume adds new perspectives to the global competition literature. It is an essential reference tool and will be of great interest to policymakers and regulators, as well as the rapidly growing ecosystem of legal practitioners and economists engaged in the field.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:27:35 -0800Making work more equal : A new labour market segmentation approachhttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362992
This book is inspired by, and dedicated to, Jill Rubery. Jill is a major figure in international debates on inequalities in work and employment. Her intellectual contributions are renowned for both their critical questioning of mainstream theoretical approaches, whether in economics, management, industrial relations or comparative systems, and their attention to real-world empirical detail. Jill&rsquo;s intellectual roots are with the influential Cambridge economics group researching labor market segmentation in the late 1970s and 1980s during a period when Keynesian economic thought was being eclipsed by neoclassical economics modeling. The research was inter-disciplinary, grounded in data (mostly involving case studies of firms) and driven by an ambitious intellectual agenda that developed theory while also illuminating practical matters of relevance to policy-makers and practitioners.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:22:24 -0800Beyond the crisishttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362985
We live in turbulent times. This begs the question of how the world might look once the crisis (or crises) is over. For the WRR Lecture 2010, we addressed this question by inviting two internationally renowned experts in the field of future research: Angela Wilkinson, Director of the Futures Programme at Oxford University (UK) and John Robinson, Professor of Sustainable Development at the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver (Canada).Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:12:25 -0800The Art of Audit. Eight remarkable government auditors on stagehttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362977
Accountability, good government, and public trust are intricately linked. Supreme Audit Institutions fulfill an exceptional role in the public domain, checking if governments spend their money properly. They are like 'watchdogs' for citizens and parliaments with the purpose of auditing public expenditure and examining the effectiveness of policies. They aim to strengthen the trustworthiness of government institutions, all the more so in fragile democracies. They do so, for instance, in striving to disclose cases of corruption, not just in the highest echelons of government, but also in everyday petty bribery. And they can be found counting houses, roads and water taps, to see if government's promises are being kept. On the occasion of the retirement of Saskia J. Stuiveling as the president of the Netherlands Court of Audit, eight (former) heads of audit institutions talk candidly about their work and innovations in the area of public auditing, about how the financial crisis affected their profession, about the advent of open data and about the need for new skills to audit the oil industry. Each of them - Faiza Kefi (Tunisia), Josef Moser (Austria), Terence Nombembe (South Africa), Heidi Mendoza (Philippines), Alar Karis (Estonia), David Walker (USA), John Muwanga (Uganda) and Abdulbasit Turki Saeed (Iraq) - has made a difference in his or her country, often under difficult, adverse and sometimes outright dangerous circumstances.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 18:04:51 -0800Growth and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africahttps://www.merlot.org/merlot/viewMaterial.htm?id=1362971
While the economic growth renaissance in sub-Saharan Africa is widely recognized, much less is known about progress in living conditions. This book comprehensively evaluates trends in living conditions in 16 major sub-Saharan African countries, corresponding to nearly 75% of the total population. A striking diversity of experience emerges. While monetary indicators improved in many countries, others are yet to succeed in channeling the benefits of economic growth into the pockets of the poor. Some countries experienced little economic growth and saw little material progress for the poor. At the same time, the large majority of countries have made impressive progress in key non-monetary indicators of well-being. Overall, the African growth renaissance earns two cheers, but not three. While gains in macroeconomic and political stability are real, they are also fragile. Growth on a per capita basis is much better than in the 1980s and 1990s, yet not rapid compared with other developing regions. Importantly from a pan-African perspective, key economies-particularly Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa-are not among the better performers. Looking forward, realistic expectations are required. The development process is, almost always, a long hard slog. Nevertheless, real and durable factors appear to be at play on the sub-continent with positive implications for growth and poverty reduction in future.Thu, 1 Feb 2018 17:43:49 -0800